The wise have eyes in their heads, while the fool walks in the darkness; but I came to realizethat the same fate overtakes them both.
Then I said to myself,
"The fate of the fool will overtake me also.
What then do I gain by being wise?"
I said to myself, "This too is meaningless."
For the wise, like the fool, will not be long remembered;
the days have already come when both have been forgotten.
Like the fool, the wise too must die! - Ecclesiastes 2:14-16

well I just wanted to post some pieces of music and ask people what they thought of them, that's all.

like this one:

It's good. Classic Beethoven. The progression was a little bland. But I like classical music that changes and builds up over time.

The wise have eyes in their heads, while the fool walks in the darkness; but I came to realizethat the same fate overtakes them both.
Then I said to myself,
"The fate of the fool will overtake me also.
What then do I gain by being wise?"
I said to myself, "This too is meaningless."
For the wise, like the fool, will not be long remembered;
the days have already come when both have been forgotten.
Like the fool, the wise too must die! - Ecclesiastes 2:14-16

really? I love that kind of progression. On a related note, there are a bunch of composers I used to hate vehemently for producing what I thought was completely tasteless music and being celebrated anyway, and beethoven was definitely one of them, but for some reason they sound amazing to me now.

What do you think of this one? I used to hate this piece actually, but now it's my favorite by Rachmaninoff - I'm not sure how that happened

"A stupid despot may constrain his slaves with iron chains; but a true politician binds them even more strongly with the chain of their own ideas" - Michel Foucault

It's my favorite genre of music. I'll post a few pieces I've been listening to lately:

I'm starting to like some modern classical stuff. Schoenberg is horrible, though. I don't understand how someone can like the piece at the bottom (the last video):

Lying on the hill, crawling over the windowsill into your living room, they stare out, glass-eyed aimless heads, bodies torn by vultures. You are the man whose hands are rank with the smell of death. - Peter Hammill, "The Emperor in His War Room"

my school's orchestra is playing rite of spring - I think it's an ugly piece of music though. I really hate most things composed in the 20th century including jazz, minimalist, atonal, blues, rock, hip hop, etc.

"A stupid despot may constrain his slaves with iron chains; but a true politician binds them even more strongly with the chain of their own ideas" - Michel Foucault

my school's orchestra is playing rite of spring - I think it's an ugly piece of music though. I really hate most things composed in the 20th century including jazz, minimalist, atonal, blues, rock, hip hop, etc.

I don't really either. Again, I've just started listening to some modern pieces, and I've found that modernism as a whole is very polarizing (in other words, there's some stuff I like, and a lot I hate). I do like Rite of Spring's dissonance and harshness, though. When done right, it sounds good.

Lying on the hill, crawling over the windowsill into your living room, they stare out, glass-eyed aimless heads, bodies torn by vultures. You are the man whose hands are rank with the smell of death. - Peter Hammill, "The Emperor in His War Room"

my school's orchestra is playing rite of spring - I think it's an ugly piece of music though. I really hate most things composed in the 20th century including jazz, minimalist, atonal, blues, rock, hip hop, etc.

I don't really either. Again, I've just started listening to some modern pieces, and I've found that modernism as a whole is very polarizing (in other words, there's some stuff I like, and a lot I hate). I do like Rite of Spring's dissonance and harshness, though. When done right, it sounds good.

Nothing beats Brahms and Dvorak, though.

Lying on the hill, crawling over the windowsill into your living room, they stare out, glass-eyed aimless heads, bodies torn by vultures. You are the man whose hands are rank with the smell of death. - Peter Hammill, "The Emperor in His War Room"

Epsilon: There are so many stories where some brave hero decides to give their life to save the day, and because of their sacrifice, the good guys win, the survivors all cheer, and everybody lives happily ever after. But the hero... never gets to see that ending. They'll never know if their sacrifice actually made a difference. They'll never know if the day was really saved. In the end, they just have to have faith.

my school's orchestra is playing rite of spring - I think it's an ugly piece of music though. I really hate most things composed in the 20th century including jazz, minimalist, atonal, blues, rock, hip hop, etc.

I don't really either. Again, I've just started listening to some modern pieces, and I've found that modernism as a whole is very polarizing (in other words, there's some stuff I like, and a lot I hate). I do like Rite of Spring's dissonance and harshness, though. When done right, it sounds good.

my school's orchestra is playing rite of spring - I think it's an ugly piece of music though. I really hate most things composed in the 20th century including jazz, minimalist, atonal, blues, rock, hip hop, etc.

I don't really either. Again, I've just started listening to some modern pieces, and I've found that modernism as a whole is very polarizing (in other words, there's some stuff I like, and a lot I hate). I do like Rite of Spring's dissonance and harshness, though. When done right, it sounds good.

Nothing beats Brahms and Dvorak, though.

cool Dvorak is one of my favorite, especially the symphony you posted; I like Brahms too, but just a few pieces get slightly soporific - I've heard that excerpt before, but it's not my favorite.

Personally, Brahms's four symphonies are some of my favorite pieces of classical music, especially that piece. For some reason, I feel that it clicks with my personality, and it's very sublime. I feel the same way with some of Debussy's pieces.

What do you think of the Bachanalle by Saint-saens I posted earlier?

Some of it sounded very Middle Eastern, and it wasn't until I looked up the title that I discovered that it was from an opera called Samson and Delilah, and then I kind of got it. The theme just after the opening one was very catchy. Overall, definitely a good piece of music.

Who's your favorite composer (or if you can't answer that, period)?

Lying on the hill, crawling over the windowsill into your living room, they stare out, glass-eyed aimless heads, bodies torn by vultures. You are the man whose hands are rank with the smell of death. - Peter Hammill, "The Emperor in His War Room"

my school's orchestra is playing rite of spring - I think it's an ugly piece of music though. I really hate most things composed in the 20th century including jazz, minimalist, atonal, blues, rock, hip hop, etc.

I don't really either. Again, I've just started listening to some modern pieces, and I've found that modernism as a whole is very polarizing (in other words, there's some stuff I like, and a lot I hate). I do like Rite of Spring's dissonance and harshness, though. When done right, it sounds good.

Nothing beats Brahms and Dvorak, though.

cool Dvorak is one of my favorite, especially the symphony you posted; I like Brahms too, but just a few pieces get slightly soporific - I've heard that excerpt before, but it's not my favorite.

Personally, Brahms's four symphonies are some of my favorite pieces of classical music, especially that piece. For some reason, I feel that it clicks with my personality, and it's very sublime. I feel the same way with some of Debussy's pieces.

What do you think of the Bachanalle by Saint-saens I posted earlier?

Some of it sounded very Middle Eastern, and it wasn't until I looked up the title that I discovered that it was from an opera called Samson and Delilah, and then I kind of got it. The theme just after the opening one was very catchy. Overall, definitely a good piece of music.

Who's your favorite composer (or if you can't answer that, period)?

I know what you mean - I listen to debussy, brahms, and schubert, sometimes mozart for a certain calm and gentleness their music has.

Both are very tough questions I like everything preceding circa 1900 pretty evenly. Currently my absolute favorite is Schubert, but then after that I have them in tiers.

my school's orchestra is playing rite of spring - I think it's an ugly piece of music though. I really hate most things composed in the 20th century including jazz, minimalist, atonal, blues, rock, hip hop, etc.

I don't really either. Again, I've just started listening to some modern pieces, and I've found that modernism as a whole is very polarizing (in other words, there's some stuff I like, and a lot I hate). I do like Rite of Spring's dissonance and harshness, though. When done right, it sounds good.

Nothing beats Brahms and Dvorak, though.

cool Dvorak is one of my favorite, especially the symphony you posted; I like Brahms too, but just a few pieces get slightly soporific - I've heard that excerpt before, but it's not my favorite.

Personally, Brahms's four symphonies are some of my favorite pieces of classical music, especially that piece. For some reason, I feel that it clicks with my personality, and it's very sublime. I feel the same way with some of Debussy's pieces.

What do you think of the Bachanalle by Saint-saens I posted earlier?

Some of it sounded very Middle Eastern, and it wasn't until I looked up the title that I discovered that it was from an opera called Samson and Delilah, and then I kind of got it. The theme just after the opening one was very catchy. Overall, definitely a good piece of music.

Who's your favorite composer (or if you can't answer that, period)?

I know what you mean - I listen to debussy, brahms, and schubert, sometimes mozart for a certain calm and gentleness their music has.

Both are very tough questions I like everything preceding circa 1900 pretty evenly. Currently my absolute favorite is Schubert, but then after that I have them in tiers.

I'm like you - my classical music tastes are changing really quickly. The list below is not what it looked like two months ago, and it's probably not what it's going to look like two months from now, but here it goes (Tier 3 is like my experimental, not-sure-about-yet tier):

Tier 1: Bach, Beethoven, Dvorak, Brahms, Tchaikovsky, and Debussy

Tier 2: Liszt, Chopin, Mozart, and Vivaldi

Tier 3: Stravinsky, Mahler, Wagner, and Rachmaninoff

This list probably seems a little incomplete - I've been listening to Bach and Beethoven too long, and I'm just starting to get into the Romantic and Modern classical music.

Lying on the hill, crawling over the windowsill into your living room, they stare out, glass-eyed aimless heads, bodies torn by vultures. You are the man whose hands are rank with the smell of death. - Peter Hammill, "The Emperor in His War Room"

I'm like you - my classical music tastes are changing really quickly. The list below is not what it looked like two months ago, and it's probably not what it's going to look like two months from now, but here it goes (Tier 3 is like my experimental, not-sure-about-yet tier):

Tier 1: Bach, Beethoven, Dvorak, Brahms, Tchaikovsky, and Debussy

Tier 2: Liszt, Chopin, Mozart, and Vivaldi

Tier 3: Stravinsky, Mahler, Wagner, and Rachmaninoff

This list probably seems a little incomplete - I've been listening to Bach and Beethoven too long, and I'm just starting to get into the Romantic and Modern classical music.

lol yep me too, except mine isn't expanding that quickly, and was always pretty broad. Right now, I'm veering toward that period that's just at the junction between Romanticism and 20th century and I'm not even very deep into it. I'm only just starting to like Rachmaninoff, prokofiev will take a while, and good god I hate Mahler's music....

It amazes me how he pulls together a whole orchestra and manages to make it dull, I mean, violin sections in unison are inherently majestic, you have to try pretty hard to kill that majestic and melodious chorus. If music could ramble, Mahler's symphonies are probably the closest things. And most annoying of all is how he briefly inserts a pleasant melody in there for like 5 seconds and leads you to believe that the symphony is going to turn into something Tchaikovsky-esque, and then he kills it and never plays that line again. Maybe they're supposed to function as "ambiance" music, but it will take quite a while before I even begin to understand the appeal of Mahler.

"A stupid despot may constrain his slaves with iron chains; but a true politician binds them even more strongly with the chain of their own ideas" - Michel Foucault

I'm like you - my classical music tastes are changing really quickly. The list below is not what it looked like two months ago, and it's probably not what it's going to look like two months from now, but here it goes (Tier 3 is like my experimental, not-sure-about-yet tier):

Tier 1: Bach, Beethoven, Dvorak, Brahms, Tchaikovsky, and Debussy

Tier 2: Liszt, Chopin, Mozart, and Vivaldi

Tier 3: Stravinsky, Mahler, Wagner, and Rachmaninoff

This list probably seems a little incomplete - I've been listening to Bach and Beethoven too long, and I'm just starting to get into the Romantic and Modern classical music.

lol yep me too, except mine isn't expanding that quickly, and was always pretty broad. Right now, I'm veering toward that period that's just at the junction between Romanticism and 20th century and I'm not even very deep into it. I'm only just starting to like Rachmaninoff, prokofiev will take a while, and good god I hate Mahler's music....

Even this? This piece is what got me interested in Mahler. I haven't listened to much more of his lately, but this piece is pretty beautiful.

It amazes me how he pulls together a whole orchestra and manages to make it dull, I mean, violin sections in unison are inherently majestic, you have to try pretty hard to kill that majestic and melodious chorus. If music could ramble, Mahler's symphonies are probably the closest things. And most annoying of all is how he briefly inserts a pleasant melody in there for like 5 seconds and leads you to believe that the symphony is going to turn into something Tchaikovsky-esque, and then he kills it and never plays that line again. Maybe they're supposed to function as "ambiance" music, but it will take quite a while before I even begin to understand the appeal of Mahler.

I feel that way about Schoenberg, although in a different way. His tone row and atonality stuff is horrible. It actually diminished my faith in classical music as the superior genre of music... then I listened to Beethoven, and I got it back again. Modern classical music is definitely a very difficult thing to understand, but it did kind of grow out of the Romantic period.

Lying on the hill, crawling over the windowsill into your living room, they stare out, glass-eyed aimless heads, bodies torn by vultures. You are the man whose hands are rank with the smell of death. - Peter Hammill, "The Emperor in His War Room"

Listening to transcriptions of Bach for instrumentation far different from that of the original arrangements (e.g. 8-bit, piano, theremin, glass harmonica, tesla coil) has drawn my attention to the real universality of his work. It just seems hard to make Bach sound uncharacteristic or bad insofar as his music is played.

"The book you are looking for hasn't been written yet. What you are looking for you are going to have to find yourself, it's not going to be in a book..." -Sidewalker

I'm like you - my classical music tastes are changing really quickly. The list below is not what it looked like two months ago, and it's probably not what it's going to look like two months from now, but here it goes (Tier 3 is like my experimental, not-sure-about-yet tier):

Tier 1: Bach, Beethoven, Dvorak, Brahms, Tchaikovsky, and Debussy

Tier 2: Liszt, Chopin, Mozart, and Vivaldi

Tier 3: Stravinsky, Mahler, Wagner, and Rachmaninoff

This list probably seems a little incomplete - I've been listening to Bach and Beethoven too long, and I'm just starting to get into the Romantic and Modern classical music.

lol yep me too, except mine isn't expanding that quickly, and was always pretty broad. Right now, I'm veering toward that period that's just at the junction between Romanticism and 20th century and I'm not even very deep into it. I'm only just starting to like Rachmaninoff, prokofiev will take a while, and good god I hate Mahler's music....

Even this? This piece is what got me interested in Mahler. I haven't listened to much more of his lately, but this piece is pretty beautiful.

It amazes me how he pulls together a whole orchestra and manages to make it dull, I mean, violin sections in unison are inherently majestic, you have to try pretty hard to kill that majestic and melodious chorus. If music could ramble, Mahler's symphonies are probably the closest things. And most annoying of all is how he briefly inserts a pleasant melody in there for like 5 seconds and leads you to believe that the symphony is going to turn into something Tchaikovsky-esque, and then he kills it and never plays that line again. Maybe they're supposed to function as "ambiance" music, but it will take quite a while before I even begin to understand the appeal of Mahler.

I feel that way about Schoenberg, although in a different way. His tone row and atonality stuff is horrible. It actually diminished my faith in classical music as the superior genre of music... then I listened to Beethoven, and I got it back again. Modern classical music is definitely a very difficult thing to understand, but it did kind of grow out of the Romantic period.

I've heard that before, but I just listened to it again - it's not as bad as what he usually composes, but it's definitely in the same aimless style. The piece has no direction. Listening to his music is like finding oneself in the middle of an oceanic abyss with not a being or object in sight, frantically struggling in the water to make some sort of advance - to swim - but remaining stationary and going no where. It's almost suffocating. Though this piece specifically wasn't nearly that bad - this was relaxing. But I'd point to his symphony no1 for an example of that helpless, aimless style.

"A stupid despot may constrain his slaves with iron chains; but a true politician binds them even more strongly with the chain of their own ideas" - Michel Foucault

At 11/6/2013 10:08:39 PM, Poetaster wrote:Listening to transcriptions of Bach for instrumentation far different from that of the original arrangements (e.g. 8-bit, piano, theremin, glass harmonica, tesla coil) has drawn my attention to the real universality of his work. It just seems hard to make Bach sound uncharacteristic or bad insofar as his music is played.

I haven't really heard Bach in anything other than piano (for the pieces written for harpsichord), but I agree - his is music in its purest form. Do you have a favorite piece by him?

"A stupid despot may constrain his slaves with iron chains; but a true politician binds them even more strongly with the chain of their own ideas" - Michel Foucault

You don't you like schubert? His is the most elegant music I've ever heard - sometimes even more elegant than Mozart's - it's like the pinnacle of sublimity. For example:

That really is beautiful. I'll take a step back from the Modernist mess and start looking at some early Romantic music. Beethoven probably wrote the most sublime music for piano (Chopin and Liszt were a little too upbeat).

Lying on the hill, crawling over the windowsill into your living room, they stare out, glass-eyed aimless heads, bodies torn by vultures. You are the man whose hands are rank with the smell of death. - Peter Hammill, "The Emperor in His War Room"

At 11/6/2013 10:08:39 PM, Poetaster wrote:Listening to transcriptions of Bach for instrumentation far different from that of the original arrangements (e.g. 8-bit, piano, theremin, glass harmonica, tesla coil) has drawn my attention to the real universality of his work. It just seems hard to make Bach sound uncharacteristic or bad insofar as his music is played.

I haven't really heard Bach in anything other than piano (for the pieces written for harpsichord), but I agree - his is music in its purest form. Do you have a favorite piece by him?

I find myself always returning to the simplicity and cyclic grace of the final chorale from his 143rd Cantata. I am possessed also by his Passacaglia and Fugue in C minor (the organ does seem to suit that one best).

His Gavotte en Rondeau from his 3rd Partita is especially well-known, and with good reason: it is a work of utter repose, so effortless in its mastery and so natural as to be without apparent calculation, like a water droplet blindly minimizing its surface area. (Carl Sagan put it on Voyager's Golden Record and used it in his Cosmos series to narrate an animation depicting the entire process of evolution; in my opinion it is uniquely worthy of such use.)

Here is the chorale which I first mentioned; it is rather short, but so gratifyingly harmonious:

You don't you like schubert? His is the most elegant music I've ever heard - sometimes even more elegant than Mozart's - it's like the pinnacle of sublimity. For example:

That really is beautiful. I'll take a step back from the Modernist mess and start looking at some early Romantic music. Beethoven probably wrote the most sublime music for piano (Chopin and Liszt were a little too upbeat).

I'm going to have to disagree with you on that. Between Waldstein and the 3rd mvt of moonlight sonata (both of which are awesome), I don't think Beethoven was especially concerned with making peaceful piano music. Many of Chopin's and Liszt's pieces are meant for virtuosos and to simply show off the grandness of the grand piano, so they're excluded as well. Schubert or Brahms would be close competitors for most sublime or peaceful. I have yet to find a piano piece by schubert that isn't stately and peaceful.

"A stupid despot may constrain his slaves with iron chains; but a true politician binds them even more strongly with the chain of their own ideas" - Michel Foucault

At 11/6/2013 10:52:55 PM, Poetaster wrote:Whoops, that last link was to the whole cantata; definitely not "short"!

Sorry, here is the chorale itself:

<video in original post>

I didn't like the other two, they leaned more toward the emotionally inert style of baroque, but I definitely like this one. What do you think of the 2nd mvt of his Oboe Concerto in D minor?

Perhaps you might like the lute transcription of the Gavotte? It is a bit more bouncy, and is interesting for being transcribed by Bach himself. I'll add that there is a middle section of the fugue in C minor which is completely...amniotic; a sonic isolation tank; the sound of suspension. Anyway, it is what seduced me about the piece. But I'll admit that Bach can be dry (in that baroque sort of way)!

I find the movement you mentioned very pleasing; hushful. If you like that piece, I'd point to the 2nd movement of Vivaldi's Lute Concerto in D major as an emotionally and thematically very similar work; both of them mix (in largo) almost perfectly the tranquil and the fleetingly sinister in a way that escapes a final analysis...and that is my final analysis.

"The book you are looking for hasn't been written yet. What you are looking for you are going to have to find yourself, it's not going to be in a book..." -Sidewalker

At 11/6/2013 10:24:31 PM, 000ike wrote:Do you have a favorite piece by him?

If I had to choose a single composition by Bach to save from the irrecoverable destruction of all of his remaining work, it would (with much weeping and grief at being so forced) quite possibly be this one:

But I'd be severely and bitterly mourning the loss of, among other things, the first Prelude from his "Well-Tempered Clavier".

"The book you are looking for hasn't been written yet. What you are looking for you are going to have to find yourself, it's not going to be in a book..." -Sidewalker

Generally, I listen to electronic, but there are a few classical songs for which no substitute truly exists. For example, I've yet to see a song fall into quite the same niche as the finale to 1812 Overture. Plus, they use cannons as an instrument, which is good enough on its own. Why can't modern music match this?

Wall of Fail

"You reject religion... calling it a sickness, to what ends??? Are you a Homosexual??" - Dogknox"For me, Evolution is a zombie theory. I mean imaginary cartoons and wishful thinking support it?" - Dragonfang"There are no mental health benefits of atheism. It is devoid of rational thinking and mental protection." - Gabrian